


Gravity

by astroturfwars



Category: Free!
Genre: M/M, this was supposed to be fluffy and then turned kinda meta, why does this make me sad ugh what have i done
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-19
Updated: 2013-11-19
Packaged: 2018-01-02 01:26:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1050910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astroturfwars/pseuds/astroturfwars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ever since they were little kids, and he'd met bright violet eyes across the classroom and Rin had grinned, crooked and too enthusiastic and charming, Haru had been able to recognize there was something between them. That first day he'd thought it was the girly name, and weeks later he'd thought maybe it was the swimming, but years later he knew it had been neither.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gravity

Haru has always had an inexplicable connection to Rin.

Ever since they were little kids, and he'd met bright violet eyes across the classroom and Rin had grinned, crooked and too enthusiastic and charming, Haru had been able to recognize there was something between them. That first day he'd thought it was the girly name, and weeks later he'd thought maybe it was the swimming, but years later he knew it had been neither. 

Haru watches Rin cut through the water like scissors through wrapping paper, and he wonders if he is the earth to Rin's moon or if it's the other way around. He's never truly been able to move on--not in the days weeks _months_ since Rin left, since Rin came back--from that crooked smile that had spun the red thread between them in the first place. And it's not for lack of effort; Haru has tried (god damn it, he's tried _so hard_ ) to wipe the afterimage of Rin from behind his eyes, his smiles and his scowls and his tears, has been trying for four years.

He's tried reasoning it out, tried figuring out why he can't cut himself away from the anchor that is the set of Rin's mouth--sadangryvicious( _happy_ )--but it always comes back to the question of _why_. _Why_ didn't Rin beat him when he first came back? _Why_ would he show up to the old swim club that night and ask Haru to race like that's all there ever was? _Why_ were they innately aware of each other's presence in the way sailors returning from a long voyage were aware of the steady glow of their lighthouse?

Haru has given up on reasoning it out long ago and wraps himself up inside his own head instead, because that's the furthest and the closest to Rin he can get, even if he sees Rin everywhere. And Haru does see him everywhere, in a sense: Haru sees Rin beneath the water, sees him outlined in the fog on his goggles, sees him in the steam of his bath. He can't get away from Rin, because Rin is in the water (Rin _is_ the water, he is chlorine and sweat and tears, all as familiar to Haru as breathing) and water is all that matters to Haru. 

Haru knows this, and he wonders if that means, transitively, that Rin is all that matters to him. 

Haru thinks it might have been this way for a very long time. 

Rin flings himself into Haru's arms, the press of his body real and vital and solid, so much bigger in life than in Haru's head, and Haru can feel that red thread catching them up cat's-cradle messy, strings as tight as Rin's grip. Over Rin's broad shoulders he sees Makoto and Nagisa and the thousands of people in the stands, but they're all dim and dark in the way everything is when you're blinded by imminent light. 

"Haru," Rin gasps, clenches Haru's heart in his hands as he weaves that thread in and out of the veins and arteries and makes a nest for himself in the center of Haru's chest. Rin is all water now: soaked and smelling like chlorine and salty sweat, crying on Haru's shoulder and calling his name. His voice echoes in Haru's bones and pulls like the tide on his mind and his heart and maybe his soul, if that's what is making Haru feel like he's falling apart and coming together at the same time, and Haru thinks Rin is his earth. Rin tethers him with red strings, Rin is visceral and immediate and steady, Rin is shot through and through with faults and disasters, and he is alive in a way that Haru cannot be without him. 

"You showed me the best sight I could've asked for," Rin says into the crook of his neck, ragged and thick and hot, and Haru thinks it's the other way around. He thinks that Rin, here, now, is the best sight he could've asked for. He thinks that Rin has taken him apart and put him back together, and he's lost a few pieces and found new ones and his puzzle is incomplete and stained with sweat and tears and chlorine but Rin's hands are working diligently at it now, fitting shapes against one another. Haru thinks his puzzle is a picture of Rin, his eyes wide and excited, grinning ear to ear, challenging and confident and _alive_ , so bright that the background colors bleed out behind him, leaving just Rin and the water and a few red strings. 

Haru closes his eyes, breathes in the scent of Rin and water and the earth (all one and the same, ever since it's ever mattered), and lets gravity do its job. 

"Yeah."

**Author's Note:**

> The red strings/thread was the whole red strings of fate metaphor, which hopefully is enough of an established thing that everyone got it. I think it is, but I wasn't entirely sure, so this is me covering the bases. 
> 
> I just have a lot of feelings I'm sorry ugh.


End file.
